To commend major field archaeological discoveries and innovative, creative, and scientific archaeological research findings during the recent three years (2013-2015), the Selection Committee of the Shanghai Archaeology Forum selected 40 shortlisted meritorious studies from 93 nominations, and selected 10 archaeological field-discoveries and 11 archaeological research findings for the awards this year. Award-winners come from every continent, with their awarding content covering human origin, urbanization, migration and other great issues. Besides, it also covers specific ethnic development processes of Taiwan, Aztec, Mayan, et al.

This year, the Shanghai Archaeology Forum set up a “Lifetime Achievement Award” for the first time. Lord Colin Renfrew, an academician of the Royal Academy of Sciences and an archaeologist of the University of Cambridge received the award. He told reporters, “We have heard a lot of great researches. For instance, human origin may have been dated back to one million years earlier, plus, the Temple of the Feathered Serpent’s underground tunnel found in Mexico. The Shanghai-based forum has been maintained at a very high standard. In addition, I am also pleased to find that more Chinese archaeologists have participated in the forum. Just a few years ago, Chinese scholars simply focused on local excavations, but now their interests have been increasingly widespread. The contact between Chinese and foreign archaeologists have been increasingly close, which is a very positive thing, because China is an important part of the world’s archaeological map.”

10 Field-discovery Awards:

(1) Thomas Emerson (University of Illinois, USA): Revealing North America’s First Native City: Rediscovery and Large-Scale Excavation of Cahokia’s East St. Louis Precinct;

(2) Maceira Fulanjipan (Sapienza University of Rome): Turkey Malatya Lion earliest palace ruins District: A New Origin of the State;

(2) Ian Hodder (Stanford University): Çatalhöyük: Important Anatolian Contributions to the Development of Early Societies;

(3) Anatoly Derevianko (Russian Academy of Sciences, Siberian Branch): Three Global Human Migrations in Eurasia: the Origin of Humans and the Peopling of Southwestern, Southern, Eastern and Southeastern Asia and the Caucasus;

(4) Amy Bogard & Amy Sterling (University of Oxford): From First Farmers to First Cities: New Insights into the Agricultural Origins of Urban Societies in Western Eurasia;

(5) Leonardo López Luján (Mexico’s National Human and History Institute) : The Great Temple Project: in Search of the Sacred Precinct of Mexico-Tenochtitlan;

(7) Alasdair Whittle & Alexander Bayless (Cardiff University, EnglishHeritage): The Times of Their Lives: High-resolution Radiocarbon-based Chronological Analysis of the European Neolithic, through Formal Modelling;